Pages

Sunday, 2 August 2015

Stories we should be thinking about

A few finance and related stories we need to be thinking about before Monday morning:

Macro matters:

Thoughtful piece by Mohamed El-Erian on the IMF...and why they are pushing so hard for Greek restructuring:'By hesitating to play a full financing role in the latest
bailout program for Greece, the International Monetary Fund risks alienating
both the Greek government and its European partners. Yet the institution’s
approach isn't just warranted; it could well hold the key to the success of the
challenging task of restoring Greece's growth and financial viability within
the euro zone'.

Fascinating lack of recent growth chart...

...and a lack of recent global export growth too.

Not to mention the lowest quarterly wages growth in the US since 1982:

And if you add in rising debts...especially for the young then it is easy to be worried about the global economy:

Who said precious metals were out of favour? 'Sales of American Silver and Gold Eagle Coins Set July Records...July American Silver Eagle Sales Set Record Despite Two Week Mint Shut Down...The United States Mint sold 5,529,000 American Silver Eagles in July up from June’s record amount of 4,840,000'. Very useful set of charts here from the Smaugld website:

Merkel to run for fourth term in 2017? That would suggest moving deep into a second decade of Chancellorship...interesting/surprising (link here).

Surprisingly lots of rumours about an upcoming RBS placing by the UK government (in order to crystalise a loss):

Twitter had a very rough last week...but I liked this:

Striking from @RobertMain on Goodyear (a stock I also wrote about recently - link here):

Apple is now longer a leader in the tablet market...which effectively it created:

And finally...

Crikey! 'Former teenage soldier hatches millions from
Chinese egg futures'. Link here. 'The story of how he earned so much money, so fast - 600 million yuan ($96.63 million), he says, in 2014 - highlights the casino-like nature of China's nascent futures markets, and the vulnerability of such markets to a destabilizing rout'.What would happen if the internet went down today:

Interesting: 'every time we get interrupted by something external, it takes us about 23 minutes to refocus after the interruption. Notifications are a huge hindrance to productivity' (link here).